To the Valley Below.

(Suggested listening. Lazarus. Porcupine Tree.) 

I ask you. Can we follow the storm.

So we turn east 

and I watch out the far window 

the last strip of light be swallowed.

There is just a scattered streak

across our faces 

freckles cast by the headlights and the bugs.

I wonder if I rub if they will come off.

It is farther than we thought

but you keep going and I sit curled

with the seatbelt carving strips into my cheek.

You are silent and so am I 

thinking about the rain and when it comes

how clean it makes things.

One day I will probably tell you. . .

but not tonight

with your hands on the wheel and 

the long highway stretched out from your eyes

and the storm just another mile ahead.

The rain sits like a bead curtain

over the land

a rattling sparkling door

that you have to only touch to enter.

Stretching my arms out across the seat

I drum my fingers against the dash 

and you nod your head to the beat. 

Soon with all the rain and wet and roar

things will begin again.

They will be clean again. 

I think about all the dirt and stick and stain

and stretch my fingers further 

till they are pressed against the windshield.

Perhaps it will begin there and stretch

down my long arms like a mountain slope

to gather like a sea around me 

drowning my sins and shame. 

The rain streams down the glass

pooling and separating and cleansing.

Suddenly the storm is gone

and I am still dry. still dirty. 

I look at you and think of how I see you

all clumsy handed with child's eyes

with the broken bird wing across one palm

and your redstained fingers clenched

saying I didn't mean to I didn't know

I know.

I know you didn't know, didn't mean to. 

All across my skin though

I can feel the angry horrid things 

I wanted to say, that I said at night

on the phone with a stranger to you

as if it didn't count because they didn't know

who you were and that you honestly

you didn't know.

Something about this storm

gave me hope that in all of it's weight 

and wonder and striking out the moon

that the wet and dark would make me clean

erase me so far that I forgot all the things

I never meant to feel.

One day I will give it to you.

A single red feather and the word 

forgiven.

Perhaps you will give it back

and I can be clean

again. 

The lightning strikes one last time

and in the flash we glow

like angels

with perfect wings.